Any senior leader will understand that not paying attention to financial data will have dire consequences eventually. I would argue that marketing data deserves the same attention.

Why pay attention to marketing KPIs?

There are three reasons why marketing data deserves your attention, even if you do not have a background in marketing.

1. It’s a leading indicator for financial and academic performance

Your enrolment may be OK this year, but if admissions is receiving fewer applications than last year, next year’s intake is at risk.

Look further ahead and the pattern becomes even clearer. If you are receiving fewer student enquiries, seeing web traffic drop or your school becomes less visible across the web, all else being equal, you may have an enrolment problem building.

Marketing performance can also affect academic reputation in a qualitative way by making your institution more visible and attractive to the students you most want to reach. For example, QS includes an indicator, which looks at both the share of international students and the diversity of their nationalities.

2. Earlier, smarter, and less drastic course corrections

Early warning gives you time to make measured changes and give them a chance to work. Marketing data enables you to see farther ahead and this can help to avoid drastic measures such as layoffs and budget cuts.

When you are falling behind, a marketing fix may be all that’s needed. For example, raising your advertising budget or shifting priorities.

At other times, you will need action across the institution, backed by active senior sponsorship. Think of changes in course portfolio, fee structure, target markets, or scholarships. Underlying IT issues can also greatly hamper marketing performance.

3. Proactively support (and challenge!) the marketing team

Like all professionals, marketers can get bogged down in business as usual. They may have learned to live with certain facts of life. But to achieve genuinely better marketing and recruitment results often requires challenging the status quo.

Some examples:

• IT: No one makes the time or investment needed for systems that could save substantial time and money within two or three years.

• Compliance: Data protection, and if you’re in the EU, GDPR compliance is important, but sometimes data protection policies overreach and hamper effective marketing.

• Message: If your institution’s positioning is unclear, your marketing will struggle to pursuade.

If you’re a marketing manager or director, you have a duty to highlight these challenges, time and time again, in language that non-marketers can understand.

If you’re a leader without a marketing background, your duty is to make every effort to understand the overall and long-term impact on your institution.

Each of these examples represents a deadlock that needs senior involvement to break. One party, or perhaps both, will need to go out of their comfort zone. That usually only happens with pressure and support from leadership.

Which KPIs to track?

If you agree that keeping an eye on marketing performance is important, the next question is, what to track, and how often? If you are not looking at marketing data yet, quarterly is a good place to start.

Below are the key metrics to keep an eye on, working outwards from enrolment to discovery.

Admitted students and offer take-up rate. You’ll never have more new enrolments than the number of students you admitted. But admitted students may have applied at multiple institutions or decide not to enrol for different reasons. The admission-to-enrolment ratio (offer take-up rate) will tell you how often this happens.

If offer take-up rate is low or dropping compared to previous years, it can point to a communications issue, such as not reassuring offer holders enough or a shift in the competitive landscape.

The best way to find out what drives a low offer take-up rate is to contact admitted students, or a sample of them, soon after their offer and ask for feedback.

Website visits and website conversion rate. Any applicant is highly likely to have visited your website at some point, probably multiple times. As I argue in my book , your website is therefore a crucial link in the student recruitment chain.

But it’s not just about how many prospective students visit your website, it matters just as much what they do there. The website conversion rate is the ratio of website users that take an action divided by total web traffic. Low conversion can point to poorly executed campaigns or structural website issues. A common cause is offering too few low-touch ways to engage, perhaps only an “apply now” button.

Pre-website visibility. It is increasingly important to pay attention to what prospective students see, and do not see, about your institution before they ever visit your website.

The media landscape is changing: AI is changing how students search and people are less likely to click out from social media platforms. There isn’t one single place or number that can capture your visibility across the web, but you can keep an eye on this through a composite of:

• (GSC) impressions: Google reports how many times your webpages were featured in its search result pages, even if people didn’t click through
• Social media visibility: Social platforms such as Instagram and YouTube report on visibility and impressions of what you post. Social listening tools can also track visibility and sentiment in posts by others.
• AI mentions: AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini don’t share stats on what people ask and what they mention in their answers. You can still identify the prompts that matter most, test them regularly and track whether and how your institution appears.

Taken together, online visibility level is often your earliest signal. Improving visibility will carry over to website visits, enquiries, applications, and enrolments.

What if you’re not capturing these KPIs?

It is not uncommon for education institutions to struggle with reporting marketing KPIs. But if this is the case, you are flying blind. The first order of the day should be to establish a basic way of measuring marketing performance – so you can benchmark performance year over year.

In short

Paying attention to these marketing KPIs can help you spot enrolment risk early. You will buy yourself valuable extra time and options to act, and by addressing inefficiencies such as low offer take-up rate or website conversion, you may improve recruitment outcomes without increasing your marketing spend.

For additional background, please see:

• “șÚÁÏčÙÍű Podcast: Are you using the right digital channels to reach international students?”
• “Survey highlights a growing ‘engagement gap’ between international student expectations and institutional response”
• “AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment”

The post Beyond enrolment: The marketing signals education leaders should watch appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Our hosts are then joined by Tim O’Brien – Senior Vice President of New Partner Development with – and Education marketing coach and author for a featured discussion on how AI-based search is affecting international student recruitment.

Today’s students are moving away from scrolling through pages of search results and are instead heading straight to generative AI for answers. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are no longer just homework helpers, they are becoming early stage advisors for a new generation of prospective international students.

You can listen right now in the player below, and we encourage you to subscribe via your favourite podcast app in order to receive future episodes automatically.

For additional background, please see:

• “AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment“
• “The ChatGPT Generation: How AI Is quietly rewriting the global student search experience“
• “șÚÁÏčÙÍű Podcast: Stop losing applicants: How qualification recognition drives seamless international enrolment“

The post șÚÁÏčÙÍű Podcast: Students are switching to AI for search. Are you ready? appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Prospective students are increasingly using ChatGPT and other AI models to help them make decisions – including to which schools to apply. A recent survey by INTO University Partnerships found that that 17% of recently admitted students reported to have used AI tools for researching study options.

Another stat: Cues.ai, based on web analytics data from around 20 UK universities, saw web visits referred by ChatGPT .

And all of this proof is likely understating how prospective students make decisions right now, for several reasons: People mostly read answers within the tool, and even when they click through to your website, it is notoriously hard to track. And even a traditional search in Google can bring up an AI overview as an answer.

What does AI search mean for education marketing?

Your first instinct may be to make drastic changes, but although there are definitely changes to make, my advice is to take it slow.

While AI search changes how prospective students get information, it doesn’t change the fundamentals of good marketing. You still need to get the right messages to the audience that matters to you and make sure they get the right information at an appropriate time in their decision making process.

All of the below influences how you show up in AI platforms. You’re likely already doing most of them:

• Your website is the only place on the web that is fully controlled by you. Making sure your website provides accurate information and is easy to nagivate helps prospective students directly and “feeds” the AI models at the same time.
• Ranking and comparison websites are especially important when prospective students ask questions around rankings, which they often do.
• Digital word of mouth – what your current students and alumni are saying about your institution across the web. This provides a more ‘impartial’ perspective from students’ point of view, and there are ways you can encourage this, such as working with student ambassadors as content creators.

A more important reason for not making abrupt changes: the “old” channels still work! Prospective students will continue to consult a mix of different sources, both offline and online. They will still visit student fairs and some will prefer to enlist an agent’s help. They’re still on TikTok and instagram. It’s just that AI answers are becoming an increasingly important part of the mix.

So if you’re running a digital campaign that works, keep going and make gradual changes as the need arises. And as I argue in my book , Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices that help your website show up in Google are by and large the same practices that make your institution visible on AI platforms.

What will change

That is not to say that the shift to AI search is business as usual. In the 18 years that I’ve been active in online education marketing, I have seen lots of change, but this is the quickest and most significant shift I’ve seen so far.

Here is what will change:

Tracking and KPIs. Fewer people will visit your website. And tracking those who do will get harder. This means that you will need to get comfortable doing marketing with less data on what works. And at the same time, you need to start paying attention to AI visibility.

Tracking AI visibility is tough: the only way to see inside the black box is to ask each tool the same question repeatedly and see whether your school is mentioned and with what sentiment. There are tools which will automate this process and provide aggregated statistics that you can drill down on. I personally use peec.ai.

Before you start tracking, spend some time investigating which questions prospective students are likely to ask. You can find clues by checking popular search keywords, mining student enquiries and analysing forum discussions.

Accuracy. Another aspect to pay attention to: the content of AI answers. Do they represent your institution accurately? For example, you may have offered a scholarship that has since then been discontinued. If it is still mentioned on an abandoned page on your website, AI may pick up on it.

AI tracking tools will cite the sources that informed particular answers, so if you check the answers on a regular basis, it’s often easy to find the culprit. Once you know incorrect information is out there, you can move to correct it.

Influencing AI mentions. Once you start tracking your visibility, you’ll notice that you’re not always part of the answers you’d love to be mentioned in. Influence your visibility by publishing helpful content around the question’s topic on your website and elsewhere. Since AI tools like to draw on a variety of sources, this content should come in different shapes and forms: a blog post on your website, a helpful YouTube video, a student ambassador participating in Reddit conversations. Sounds a lot like common sense good marketing, doesn’t it?

In short

Prospective students are increasingly using AI tools to compare and evaluate their study options. While there’s no need for abrupt changes to what you’re doing (keep doing what works!), this change will impact online marketing success measures. So expect fewer website visits and conversions as more people get their answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity or inside Google AI Overviews.

Now is the time to start paying attention to whether your school is mentioned in AI tools at all, and what they say about you.

For additional background, please see:

• “The ChatGPT Generation: How AI Is quietly rewriting the global student search experience”
• “Growing use of AI for study abroad decisions highlights importance of multi-channel marketing strategies”
• “Students are switching to AI for search. Are you ready?”

The post AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

In September 2025, we conducted a cross-institution survey of over 1,600 newly enrolled international students in the US and UK. Our goal was simple: to understand how students are using AI in the crucial, early part of their journey – identifying and applying to university – long before they ever step into a lecture hall.

Approximately one in six respondents (17%) indicated they used AI (Chat GPT etc) as part of their initial search, but that varies significantly by home country.

The most critical finding however appears to deliver a clear message on the value students ascribe to Large Learning Models (LLMs): 96% of AI users found the guidance they received from AI tools (ChatGPT, etc.) either met or exceeded the quality of information provided by traditional sources (websites, brochures, agents).

This figure – derived from 81% who found AI more helpful and 15% who found it about the same – presents a potentially profound challenge to the legacy digital experience offered by institutions and advisers.

While 17% of newly enrolled students used AI for their search, this 96% endorsement appears to validate the technology as functionally superior for pre-application research. For those who embrace the tool, it has become the standard.

The context: AI is already central to most university students

To place the 96% figure into context, it is important to understand that AI is not a novelty for today’s students; for many, it is already an ever-present companion in their academic lives. This survey of 1600 international students simply suggests that recruitment and admissions may simply be the final frontier of adoption.

• Turnitin produced of how students use AI. They reveal that an overwhelming majority – 86% of students globally – are already regularly using AI in their studies, with 54% using it weekly.

• In the UK, the use of generative AI tools for assessments has seen an explosive increase, with recent reports indicating that 88% to 92% of undergraduates now use AI for their coursework in some capacity.

• According to , Students commonly utilise AI to explain complex concepts, summarise articles, suggest research ideas, and search for information.

• The fact that only 17% of newly enrolled students in this survey reported using AI for their initial university search suggests this phase is the last part of the educational lifecycle to be fully integrated with this standard technology.

The new asymmetry: East Asia leads the adoption race – for now

While only 17% of newly enrolled students reported using AI for their search, this near-unanimous endorsement within this early-adopting sample (n=1622) suggests that for those who embrace the tool, it is becoming new standard pre-application research.

Beneath that single number lies a more nuanced adoption story. Usage rates vary sharply by region: nearly 30% of students from South Korea and the Philippines report using AI, along with 28% from Taiwan, 25% from Vietnam and 22% from Japan. Mainland China sits at 21%, while South Asia, Latin America and Africa show more modest uptake.

The pattern is probably familiar to those who track technology diffusion: low overall penetration, but pockets of explosive early adoption. These are the indicators of a curve that has yet to reach its inflection point. Most of us working in higher education know that time will come – and sooner than we expect.

The strategic student (and parent): How students report using AI in their search

Yet perhaps the more important insight concerns how students are using AI. Far from relying on it for superficial tasks, students are deploying it for strategic decision-making. Among those who used AI during their search:

• 61% asked about university rankings and reputation
• 39% sought programme or course details
• 34% investigated career outcomes
• 34% explored student life

These are not trivialities; they are the structural determinants of a student’s choice – with career outcomes near the top of the search.

The picture that emerges is one in which AI acts as an early-stage adviser – a synthesiser of options, a comparator of institutions and a curator of the overwhelming abundance of online information. Before applicants speak to an agent, attend a webinar or download a prospectus, many have already engaged in a long-form, personalised dialogue with an AI model.

An interesting counterpoint, and one worth emphasising, is that students are discerning in their use of AI for search. They understand where AI is helpful, and where it may be more risky. Only 16% used AI for application essays, and only 17% for visa information. These are domains where inaccuracies can be costly or where plagiarism detection software is sophisticated.

Far from reckless AI adopters, these respondents appear thoughtful and strategic. They are not blindly outsourcing high-stakes decisions; they are using AI precisely where it provides clarity without penalty.

Students value the advice they receive from AI

Students (and their parents) are not using AI simply because it is available; they appear to rate the advice highly. When asked to compare AI guidance with university websites, brochures, and even agents, a majority of students indicated the advice was more helpful than traditional sources. This is quietly significant: for many early adopters, AI is already the more effective source.

As AI moves into the top of the recruitment funnel, the first impression of an institution may no longer come from an optimised Google search, but from a generative AI model such as Deepseek, Gemini, or ChatGPT.

It means students are more likely to ask questions in natural language – “Which universities are best for engineering given my budget?” – and receive answers drawn from a diffuse and imperfect online footprint. This means the accuracy, consistency, and clarity of publicly available information has never mattered more. We all know AI gets it wrong, but it is improving.

The implications for the advisory ecosystem of agents, high school counsellors, career coaches and so on are equally profound. AI has begun to take on the foundational advisory tasks of summarising facts and comparing institutions. Agents and counsellors will increasingly be valued not for reciting facts, but for providing emotional context, personalised judgement, and reassurance – all things AI still cannot do well.

Meanwhile, students accustomed to personalised, instant AI responses will bring heightened expectations to every subsequent interaction: faster turnaround times, clearer messaging, and communications that feel conversational rather than bureaucratic.

A mandate for digital clarity?

The overwhelming student preference for AI’s speed and clarity is a structural challenge that those recruiting or guiding students need to address:

• The New Baseline: For 96% of users, AI either matches or surpasses the information quality of official institutional sources. For a student to choose the official website over AI, the official source must now be unambiguously superior in both information quality and user experience.

• Neutrality is a Challenge: The 15% of users who found AI “about the same” are unlikely to be a neutral group; they are users for whom AI’s superior convenience and 24/7 access make it functionally equivalent to a slow, complex official source.

• Regional Contrast: The urgency is pronounced in regions like the Middle East and Africa (MEA), where a majority (54% of users) found AI “Much more helpful.” Conversely, in South Asia, a higher proportion found AI “about the same” (29%), suggesting that traditional agent networks remain strong and the AI experience has yet to deliver a revolutionary step-change.

• The Critique: With only 4% of users finding AI less helpful, the market will demand speed, clarity, and conversational access, which AI delivers and many institutional systems currently do not.

As AI moves to the top of the recruitment funnel, the first impression is increasingly formed by an LLM synthesis, not a controlled website visit. This means the clarity and consistency of publicly available information has never mattered more.

What can universities and advisors do now

Given how students are already using AI – wisely and in growing numbers – we need to act proactively. The following recommendations respond directly to the patterns in our survey data:

1. Optimise content for AI models, not just humans. Clear, structured programme descriptions, updated entry requirements and unambiguous tuition details improve how LLMs summarise your institution.
   
2. Test how AI currently describes you. Run prompts such as “What is University X known for?” or “Which universities are strongest in Z?” This reveals inconsistencies or outdated perceptions.
   
3. Focus on process. Machine learning AI tools can help transform the often-arduous application process, delivering a faster, more accurate experience for students and their agents, supporting institutional compliance and smarter monitoring of the conversion/yield funnels.
   
4. Support advisers to complement, not compete with, AI. Counsellors should focus on interpretation, empathy and nuanced guidance.
   
5. Publish clear, ethical guidance for applicants. Students are already wary of using AI for essays and visas; universities should reinforce good judgement with transparent policies.
   
6. Prepare for higher expectations. AI-using applicants arrive better informed and less tolerant of slow, generic or opaque responses.

The challenge is not if AI will reshape the student journey, but how quickly. The data from this survey points to a strong directional shift, validating AI as the preferred functional research tool for a growing segment. The ultimate structure of the recruitment ecosystem, however, is not a fait accompli; it hinges on the ability of human advisers and institutions to evolve beyond static information delivery and offer value – speed, nuance, and humanity – that AI cannot replicate.

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The market is shifting

Somewhere in the middle of 2025, we started talking not just about the Big Four study destinations – the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada – but also about the Big 14. The latter term is admittedly not always carefully defined, but it certainly has gained currency as a way to describe one of the most important macro trends shaping student mobility this year.

The Big 14 is generally understood to include not only major English-speaking destinations, but also a number of additional countries in Europe and Asia that continue to attract greater numbers of international students. We’re talking here about destinations like Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan – and more.

There are a number of factors at work here, including of course the more restrictive policies put in place across the Big Four over the last couple of years. But that is only part of the story. This important market dynamic is also being driven by demand-side changes, including students’ interest in more affordable destinations, and by a more active recruitment effort on the part of many of the Big 14 countries.

All that to say: There is an excellent chance that we will look back on 2025 as a turning point in the history of our sector – the year in which the marketplace became more competitive and diverse in terms of global student flows.

The calculus of study abroad is different now

There is no question that there is now a greater emphasis across student markets on affordability and on the return on investment for study abroad.

Those factors – affordability and ROI – have come to the fore in recent years. This is not new, but rather a matter of degree – the extent to which this is a priority for students deciding where and how they will study abroad.

When we look back at all the large-scale student surveys from the year, we see the same findings coming through. Students talk about cost of study, cost of living, availability of scholarships, work opportunities, graduate outcomes. Underpinning those priorities are a need for affordability and return on investment.

The effects of these patterns are already wide-ranging. They have an impact on destination choice of course, but also a massive influence on student expectations for study abroad, especially as they pertain to graduate outcomes.

Public support comes from alignment

Speaking on our most recent edition of the șÚÁÏčÙÍű Podcast, immigration specialist Jeremy Neufeld made the point that immigration policy, as it relates to international students, has to deliver demonstrable, broad-based benefits for the host country. This is key if we are to encourage or maintain the support of the general public, and of policy makers as well, for international education.

Our expectation is that, going forward, we will see much more alignment between government policy, institutional recruiting, and the larger societal and economic goals of an individual study destination.

This time we really mean it

We have been talking about diversification of foreign enrolment for years. But 2025 might be the year where the importance of building a diverse student body has truly been driven home for a critical mass of international educators.

Major study destinations have historically been over-reliant on students from a relatively small number of countries, and from China and India in particular. But Chinese numbers have been softening since before the pandemic, and India is now showing signs of slowing as well. At the same time, many institutions are becoming more targeted in their recruitment efforts and more actively diversifying recruitment across a wider field of markets. We expect this to extend into 2026 and beyond.

AI is here

Everyone’s favourite acronym came into even greater prominence this year, and we began to see AI having more concrete impacts across the sector:

• Students searched much more on AI for study abroad options. Stakeholders across our sector are moving quickly to learn and adapt to a “zero-click” future and a very different landscape for online search.
• At the same time, international recruitment professionals are making greater use of AI tools to manage their recruitment pipelines and engage with prospective students more effectively and efficiently. Especially in a more competitive environment – where timeliness and responsiveness are key – we can expect this AI toolkit to expand and develop further in the year ahead.

Thank you

Last but not least, we want to take this opportunity to thank you for reading and learning along with us. We look forward to bringing you the latest insights on international recruitment all through 2026.

The post Year in review: What we learned in 2025 appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The survey sampled 7,900 current and prospective students around the world in July and August of 2025.

At the same time as students gravitate to AI inputs to inform decision-making, research by US education consultancy EAB highlights the continued relevance of a multi-channel marketing and recruitment strategy that prioritises (1) the content and design of institutional website and (2) supporting agents with accurate, real-time information about programmes, deadlines, requirements, applications, visa guidelines, and more.

Over half intend to use ChatGPT for study abroad decisions

More than half of surveyed prospective students plan to use ChatGPT to decide which institution to study at (54%) and in which programme (53%). This is up considerably from last year, when 35% of prospects surveyed in August 2024 planned to use AI for institution selection and 38% intended to determine which subject to choose.  

Source: IDP’s Emerging Futures 8

The research also found that 85% of prospective students are seriously considering more than one study destination.

Simon Emmett, chief partnerships officer at IDP Education, commented on the implications of the findings: “While students are still turning to counsellors and universities for advice, many are telling us that AI is becoming part of their decision-making toolkit. As a result, AI is shaping the early stage of students’ journeys.”

AI as the first step, but not the only one

The growing proportion of students who are using AI tools for study abroad research is changing the role of education agents. In the past, it was common for a student to walk into an agent’s office with a vague sense of where and what they might want to study and an expectation that agents would fill in their knowledge gaps and guide their decision-making process. This is still happening, but to a lesser extent.

Vaishali Jain, a senior education counsellor at IDP Education, said she is already noticing a change in the knowledge base of students – and adjusting accordingly:

“We’re seeing a growing number of students using AI tools like ChatGPT to explore study options before they even speak to a counsellor. AI is helping students clarify their interests, compare institutions, and come to us with more focused questions, while still having the support and guidance of counsellors to keep them on track until the visa has been granted. When used thoughtfully, it helps students take more control of their learning journey.”

IDP asked a student for their perspective. Ishika Malik, who is currently in a psychology programme at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, said:

“When you’re making such a big decision it can be hard to know where to begin. By asking questions that mattered to me, AI helped me narrow down my options and understand what was possible. That made it much easier to have meaningful conversations with counsellors and finalise my application when the time was right.”

In other words, students still value agents’ insights and guidance, but they are increasingly seeking agents’ services later in the decision-making process and with different expectations than in the past.  

Students consider AI results with caution

Beyond the IDP survey, other recent research shows that most students understand that they cannot automatically trust AI responses to their questions. This has important implications for institutions and agents, since there is still significant student demand for information and guidance provided outside of AI.

For example, education consulting firm of more than 20,000 high-school students in the US found that AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini were trusted the least of all information sources about an institution. The top three resources trusted by students were:

• In-person events (e.g., campus tours, college fairs, information sessions) – 34%
• Online resources (e.g., specific college websites, college search data) – 30%
• High-school resources (e.g., teachers, coaches, counsellors) – 26%

AI chatbots came last in the list of 11 options students were asked to consider (3%).

The EAB survey findings highlight that in-person events and human advice remain the most valued sources of information for students deciding on where to study. IDP’s Simon Emmett concurs with the perspective that AI is not a replacement for other channels used by students in their research. He notes that the latest iteration of Emerging Futures found significant reliance on agents/counsellors and university websites:

“Despite the growing intent to engage AI, more than a third of students told us counsellors are among their most trusted sources of advice, and over half still rely on university websites. The role of counsellors and educators remains vital, especially when it comes to making final decisions, navigating applications, and building the confidence to take the leap.”

Implications for agent-institution partnerships

The IDP research suggests that agents’ value is shifting more to:

• Truth-proofing the results of students’ AI research;
• Offering a more authoritative source of information based on deep, real-time knowledge of institution and programme benefits;
• Liaising with institutions on the shortlist to inform them about how students are evaluating their offer versus that of competitors;
• Supporting students in terms of visa applications and processes and preparing them for study abroad.

For agents to fulfill that ability to deliver authoritative, real-time information, they need institutions to provide them with accurate, compelling facts about what is offered in terms of programmes, requirements, deadlines, etc. Regular updates and check-in calls have never been more important for productive agent-institution relationships.

For additional background, please see:

• “Students are switching to AI for search. Are you ready?“

The post Growing use of AI for study abroad decisions highlights importance of multi-channel marketing strategies appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The underlying trends here are the rapid adoption of generative AI tools – such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude – along with the integration of AI in general search, most notably the AI Overview feature introduced on Google search last year.

Talking about my (college-aged) generation

One newly released study –  – examined more than 450,000 student searches from January 2024 through April 2025. Across that sample, Everspring found that ChatGPT had become the “default search tool for Gen Z” with two in three prospective students indicating that they preferred a generative AI search over Google.

A related analysis from search marketing specialists finds that education is one of the top categories for Internet traffic referred by ChatGPT (second only to “online services”). Semrush notes as well that while the ChatGPT user base is small compared to Google’s, the ChatGPT “user base shows higher concentrations among certain segments.” In particular, nearly half of ChatGPT’s users (46.7%) are in the key 18-to-24-year-old cohort (in other words, the college-aged market segment) whereas only 1 in 4 Google users (24.7%) are in that same age group.

It should be said that Google’s user base is still considerably larger (1.6 billion college-aged users as opposed to 265 million on ChatGPT), but we’re paying attention to this now because user behaviour around search is changing quickly. “The student search journey is migrating fast. AI tools now act as advisors, influencers, and gatekeepers all in one,” says Everspring.

Another recently released study –  – found that the use of ChatGPT among high school seniors for college search doubled between 2024 and 2025. “Use of AI in the college search process is accelerating rapidly,” says Carnegie Research Specialists Conor Rayel. “In 2023, just 4% of seniors reported using AI tools like ChatGPT to explore colleges. That figure climbed to 10% in 2024 and now stands at 23% in 2025.”

What does this all mean?

“AI is rewriting how students find programmes, faster and more profoundly than most universities realise,” says the Everspring study. “Generative AI tools are collapsing the search journey, delivering full answers about your institution – and your competitors – before a prospective student ever visits your site. In doing so, they’re upending both paid and organic performance and redefining what it takes to stay competitive
Student recruitment depends on AI presence.”

Part of the solution, Everspring adds, is to “audit your content for AI visibility. Identify where you’re losing ground to AI Overviews and restructure content to be semantically rich, clearly formatted, and citation-friendly. Machines need clarity, not just keywords.”

More fundamentally, we should understand that this is a game-changing development – or even a series of game-changing developments – when it comes to search optimisation and search marketing.

Everybody with a website now has to consider how visible that site is in the context of AI search and AI Overview-type results on conventional search engines. We are going to see new strategies and new tools coming to the fore as a result, and our collective journey up that part of the digital marketing learning curve is beginning in earnest this year.

For additional background, please see:

• “New analysis estimates a five-year window for responding to AI impacts on higher education“
• “ChatGPT for international education marketing: What is ‘Prompt Engineering?’“

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“TikTok is coming for Google’s gig, as the kids might say.” —Nadia Tamez-Robledo, writing in EdSurge

If you’re of a certain generation, you “just Google it” when you need to find something, whether it’s a definition, the history of a country, or where to buy your favourite brand. But if you’re a teen or twenty-something, Googling is just one of many searches you might perform every day.

In fact, research shows that people under 34 are now more likely to visit a visually based social media platform such as TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube to find or explore topics, people, places of interest, or 
 schools that might be just the right fit for their goals and personality.

According to Google research, almost 40% of young people looking for dining or recreational options choose TikTok or Instagram rather than Google Maps or Search. Commenting on that finding, Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president at Google, told an audience at Fortune’s 2022 Brainstorm Tech conference that “We keep learning, over and over again, that new Internet users don’t have the expectations and the mindset that we have become accustomed to. The queries they ask are completely different.”

Intuitive recommendations

Often Gen Zers don’t even “query.” For example, when they open their TikTok app, their For You Page (FYP) serves them a delightful banquet of things they will probably love. Prospective international students will almost certainly have looked at schools and the posts of current international students, so their FYP will show them more of that kind of content because that’s the way the TikTok algorithm works. Interviewed in the New York Times, Pennsylvania-based Jayla Johnson, 22, said, “[TikTok] knows what I want to see. It’s less work for me [than]to actually go out of my way to search.”

Ms Johnson’s observation underlines a very important point. TikTok is mostly known for the buzzy, candy-like short video experience it provides. But underneath that is what is arguably one of the most sophisticated recommendation engines ever created. That engine is the reason the algorithm is so successful at holding people’s attention and why the platform has such a significant impact on sales of music, film, TV, books, and a wide range of other products.

Sense of authenticity

Though TikTok’s algorithm masterfully manipulates content based on user data, younger users find it to be more authentic and trustworthy than Google. Alexandria Kinsey, 24, a communications and social media coordinator, told the Times that TikTok’s results “don’t seem as biased” as Google’s. She said that she “often wants ‘a different opinion’ from what ads and websites optimised for Google say.”

The success of apps such as Instagram and TikTok is due in large part to users’ sense that they are hearing recommendations from peers, rather than from corporate brands.

Show me, don’t tell me

Another reason students turn to social media for discovery is that they love learning through video and photo-based posts – especially when it comes to experiences like dining out, travel, and study abroad. This is key because QS global research has found that 70% of students’ exploration of the “feel” of a campus or city happens before they even submit an enquiry to a school.

What are the implications for international recruiters?

Keep adjusting. Digital marketing budgets are made to be remade. Change is a constant in terms of student preferences and digital algorithms. As important as SEO remains for the institutional website (since prospective students almost always go there as part of their research), a strong presence on one to three social platforms is essential.

Choose platforms where you can establish a personality. According to We Are Social’s 2023 Global Web Index survey, TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) are favoured for product and brand research, making them likely contenders for one of your budget lines.

Enlist the help of students. TikTok and Instagram users are looking for fun, creative posts. This is where it makes all the sense in the world to have student social media ambassadors help your school with – or star in – posts and videos. More and more, major colleges and universities are leveraging current students in their overseas recruitment campaigns, and you can be sure that a good deal of their investment here is linked to social media.

Consider a third-party social media firm. School and university resources are often stretched thin, and creating a successful social strategy can be quite a lot of work. Many excellent social media marketing firms specialise in the education sector, and investing there could be wiser than overwhelming your staff, who may or may not have expertise in this area.

Back it up. If you have tweens or teens, you have probably heard something they learned on TikTok quoted as a “fact.” But TikTok and Instagram are fun/shocking trends first, accurate sources second. This is where an excellent institutional website comes in, along with accurate marketing materials and training for agents and in-country reps, and allowing students to talk with institution-vetted students on peer-to-peer platforms such as UniBuddy or The Ambassador Platform. Students can get a feel for your school on social media, but make sure they can get solid information on other channels.

For additional background, please see:

• “Is your TikTok good enough to get noticed by international students?“
• “The new playbook for international recruitment“

The post Move Over Google: Social media is also a search engine appeared first on șÚÁÏčÙÍű Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.